In Waning Hours of Storm, a Crisis Not of Its Making

In the rain and gust of a morning tropical storm, two cars race through an exhausted stretch of the old mill city of Pawtucket, past rows of triple-deckers where the space is cheap and the stacked stories loom. The flashing lights of the second car announce to all that no good will come of this.

The car being pursued, a green Ford Explorer from 1999, veers onto a dead-end street, runs out of road and swerves into the last driveway on the left. It smashes into a parked pickup truck and is quickly relieved of its three occupants, including a slight young woman with an outstanding warrant who flees in such haste that she leaves her pocketbook.

Here, then, is temptation, or fate, or truth, in the guise of a pocketbook. It bears a brand name evoking a striving elegance, Coach, and sits in the hastily abandoned car — doors open, engine running — among lingerie, high heels and other items that hint of the inelegant working life of that woman now in the wind.

And here he is, man, in the presence of John Whiting, the broad-shouldered police chief of the neighboring town of North Providence, and a three-decade veteran of law enforcement. Decisions apparently made in anger just moments ago have led him to this place beyond his jurisdiction, where there dangles a pocketbook with $714 in cash and no owner in sight.

In a way, this existential gut check has been conjured by the gasping remnants of what had been Hurricane Irene, which still has strength enough to knock out power and down trees on this Sunday morning of Aug. 28th — including one that topples onto Mineral Spring Avenue, causing paths to cross.

First comes that used green Explorer, owned by Justina Cardoso, 21, a waif of a stripper at some of Providence’s lesser establishments. She will later tell the police that she had just spent the night with a man who paid $600 for her company at a Comfort Inn. She will also say that while heading home this morning, she picked up two men, one of whom is now driving.

So this is who Justina Cardoso is, based on a court record that, like all public records, achieves only partial truth.

Photo

The paths of Police Chief John Whiting and Justina Cardoso crossed on a rainy August night in Pawtucket, R.I.Credit
Kathy Borchers/The Providence Journal

There are other public records. In 1992, for example, her name appeared in The Providence Journal after her trouble-prone father, Junior Cardoso, allegedly broke into a triple-decker apartment, hit her mother and briefly absconded with baby Justina, not yet 2 years old.

Ms. Cardoso, who now has a “Junior” tattoo on the back of her neck, began compiling her own public, predictable, record by the time she was 13: a “runaway,” a “disobedient child,” a “wayward child,” involved in the kinds of incidents that create first-name relationships with the police.

She has an outstanding warrant related to a drug-fueled extortion plot that can only be described as idiotic, and another pending charge for the illegal possession of controlled substances allegedly found in her Coach purse. At this moment, though, Ms. Cardoso’s purse contains her fresh earnings from the Comfort Inn and an unsmooth place called the Satin Doll.

Right behind her Explorer is a dark, late-model S.U.V. driven by Chief John Whiting, 57, a law-enforcement lifer who looks the part. He spent 29 years in the Pawtucket Police Department, where he was respected if not universally liked, earned a law degree, and won praise for his work in a case against a corrupt, politically connected police officer. Finally, in 2008, he landed a prestigious police chief job, in North Providence.

What happens next is blurry as rain. Ms. Cardoso will tell the police that while the Explorer slowly navigated the downed tree, the S.U.V. pulled past it, and her friend, the driver, made a hand gesture that was not a friendly wave. But Chief Whiting will later say that as he passed the crawling Explorer, someone threw a bottle or some other object that struck his vehicle.

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Past the triple-deckers with sidewalks for front yards. Past a used-car lot where people with bad credit are welcome. Right at the McDonald’s and past more triple-deckers, a Baptist church, a Dominican supermarket. Left onto the dead end called Paisley Street, with a boarded-up yellow house on the right and a “SLOW — CHILDREN” sign hanging upside-down on the left. Smack into that parked pickup truck. Bam.

Greatly motivated by her outstanding warrant, Ms. Cardoso disappears over a fence with her two companions, she will say, leaving their expletive-screaming pursuer alone with his anger and her pocketbook, packed with hard cash.

A veteran Pawtucket police officer, John Brown, soon comes upon an intriguing tableau: the damaged Explorer with doors open; the S.U.V.’s flashing lights; a former Pawtucket colleague, now the police chief of a neighboring town, talking of a chase and vanished suspects; and a Coach pocketbook in the Explorer that contains identification for a Justina Cardoso.

Photo

John Whiting, the police chief of North Providence, R.I.Credit
WPRI

The officer notices that the pocketbook, strangely, is wet; everything else around it — lingerie, high heels, clothing — is dry. Chief Whiting’s left arm begins to shake, the officer will later say, and soon the chief is speaking of personal problems that the patrol officer does not care to hear.

Officer Brown and Chief Whiting drive less than a mile to where the incident began, the toppled tree. The police chief’s left arm is trembling again, and his color is ashen, the officer will say. Then, he will recall, the chief says, “I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”

Until now. Chief Whiting goes on to explain that he found the pocketbook in the backyard and stole the money inside, court records say. He says he knows that Officer Brown likes to go to Las Vegas, and suggests the officer take the money, have fun and forget this ever happened.

The police chief then hands the patrol officer a wet roll of cash, court records say. And Officer Brown immediately feels sick to his stomach.

The state police say that Chief Whiting does not acquit himself well in the hours and days that follow, which they say he spends on a cover-up. They say that he tried to enlist Officer Brown and the Pawtucket police chief, Paul King, in concocting a false story about the transfer of seized evidence — a story that might, in fact, dirty up Officer Brown, who had done everything by the book.

In other words, the state police say, the chief failed the test, all for a modest wad of wet cash that he possessed for less than an hour.

Chief Whiting has been charged with larceny and soliciting others to commit a crime. He has been suspended from his job. He has surrendered all his firearms. His lawyer told reporters last week that he’s “doing fine,” though this is hard to imagine.

One minute, you are driving to work in a storm, ready to serve and protect. The next, you are standing in the rain on a dead-end street in a place you don’t belong, and here is a pocketbook, packed with money so terribly hard-earned. Once taken, it can never be returned.

A version of this article appears in print on September 21, 2011, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: In Waning Hours of Storm, A Crisis Not of Its Making. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe